Seguridad y eficiencia de sedación balanceada con propofol y remifentanil en endoscopia digestiva alta diagnóstica. Una experiencia exitosa

Sedation is an anesthetic technique that is widely used in current digestive endoscopic procedures because of its clear benefits for patients’ tolerance and comfort and for the endoscopist. Propofol is the most commonly used drug in monosedation, but balanced regimens using more than one drug are now widely used in diagnostic and therapeutic endoscopy. Balanced sedation using Propofol and Remifentanil allows synergistic potentiation of a sedative with an ultra-short acting opioid which in turn favors decreases of each dose. This is a series of 1,148 patients who underwent diagnostic endoscopy under balanced sedation with average Remifentanil doses of 0.9 mcg/kg of body weight and average Propofol doses of 0.47 mg/kg of body weight. There were no serious adverse events, endoscopists were highly satisfied with the procedures, and costs per drug dose were very low. This is clearly a safe and efficient scheme.